Harvard Crimson: University Is Right to Ban Fraternities, Wrong to Ban Sororities

Assault on freedom of association

Harvard University has plans to purge all single-sex social organizations from campus. The editors of the Harvard Crimson are perfectly okay with that—with the exception of sororities.

All-male clubs are bad, all-female clubs are good, runs the simple logic of the student-run newspaper. Which is funny, given that one of the justifications for getting rid of those clubs is that they are discriminatory.

The editorial dropped a few weeks after a committee recommended that Harvard's administration upgrade to a full-on ban its previous policy of imposing sanctions on students who join finals clubs. "The discriminatory practices of these organizations undermine our educational mission and the principles espoused by this Faculty and distance their members from their College experience," wrote the committee.

The Crimson agrees:

We support this recommendation, and we urge University President Drew G. Faust to do so as well. It importantly expands the discourse beyond issues of gender inequality and sexual assault to the role exclusionary social organizations play in perpetuating outdated notions of elitism, classism, and exclusivity on campus. The report rightfully highlights how these organizations impact students' sense of belonging at Harvard, especially those who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Given the serious influence of final clubs on the daily social life of Harvard undergraduates, we see this recommendation as necessary.

But:

Our support does not come without reservations about the process. The composition of the committee is primarily faculty members, and they may not be close enough to student life. Although their input is welcome, the weight of the decision should rest with deans and administrators who are trained to have student social life under their purview. Moreover, as we have opined in the past, we wish it was possible for administrators to better distinguish male final clubs and sororities. If the committee seeks to combat exclusivity and foster belonging, arguably sororities can provide a supportive role by giving women a social space on campus.

The university should combat exclusivity by excluding students who do not identify as female from forming exclusive clubs? At least the more comprehensive ban is even handed.

Harvard is a private institution, so it can implement whatever policy it wants: a ban on only finals clubs and fraternities, a ban on all single-sex groups, whatever. Whether such a course of action is wise is another matter.

The policy appears to punish students for political reasons—a consistent refrain has been that the finals clubs are not "progressive" enough. And since these groups were never officially recognized by Harvard in the first place, it puts the university in the strange position of trying to prevent students from freely associating with each other in an unofficial capacity. Will the administration employ spies to make sure too many students of same sex aren't hanging out together in a club-esque way?

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, has criticized the university for trying to eliminate single-sex clubs:

A university is an institution with circumscribed responsibilities which engages in a contract with its students. Its main responsibility is to provide them with an education. It is not an arbiter over their lives, 24/7. What they do on their own time is none of the university's business.

One of the essential values in higher education is that people can differ in their values, and that these differences can be constructively discussed. Harvard has a right to value mixed-sex venues everywhere, all the time, with no exceptions. If some of its students find value in private, single-sex associations, some of the time, a university is free to argue against, discourage, or even ridicule those choices. But it is not a part of the mandate of a university to impose these values on its students over their objections.

Universities ought to be places where issues are analyzed, distinctions are made, evidence is evaluated, and policies crafted to attain clearly stated goals. This recommendation is a sledgehammer which doesn't distinguish between single-sex and other private clubs. It doesn't target illegal or objectionable behavior such as drunkenness or public disturbances. Nor by any stretch of the imagination could it be seen as an effective, rationally justified, evidence-based policy tailored to reduce sexual assault.

This illiberal policy can only contribute to the impression in the country at large that elite universities are not dispassionate forums for clarifying values, analyzing problems, and proposing evidence-based solutions, but are institutions determined to impose their ideology and values on a diverse population by brute force.

Pinker is right. Harvard—and The Crimson—deserve all the opprobrium they're likely to receive.

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Report abuses.

The free association angle is murkier, maybe, because these groups are so closely affiliated with the university. Live by the affilation with the university and die by it? Of course I’m completely opposed to fucking with these groups or blaming them all for the sins of individual members.

“arguably sororities can provide a supportive role by giving women a social space on campus.”

Just so long as you include “trans women,” and don’t you dare question the identity of a self-identified “woman” just because that person has a dick, announces that he’s a lesbian, and that he can’t wait to get in on some pillow fights.

“So I have an idea for this new film called Sorority Brother…this football player decides he needs to get in touch with his feminine side so he registers as a woman and joins a sorority…blah blah blah tits blah blah…anyway, I’ll leave the detail work to you.”

“…elite universities are not dispassionate forums for clarifying values, analyzing problems, and proposing evidence-based solutions, but are institutions determined to impose their ideology and values on a diverse population by brute force.”

Hey, some of us fathered young men we plan to send to Harvard to not only have their asses paddled by America’s future leaders, but also so that America’s future leaders can insert strange objects into their rectums.

Back in the day, Stanford banned sororities but not fraternities, because it was believed that women couldn’t handle rejection as well when they weren’t accepted (following a string of high profile suicides).

I remember a joke about Yale and Harvard that seems to fit this situation…

A Harvard alum walks into a corporate bathroom about the same time as his colleague, a Yale alum, and they both go use the urinals. The Yale guy finishes first, flushes, and starts to head towards the door. Harvard man calls over to him, “You know at Harvard they taught us to wash our hands after we pee.”

The Yale guy looks back over his shoulder and replies, “That’s interesting. At Yale they taught us not to pee on our hands.”

We support this recommendation, and we urge University President Drew G. Faust to do so as well. It importantly expands the discourse beyond issues of gender inequality and sexual assault to the role exclusionary social organizations play in perpetuating outdated notions of elitism, classism, and exclusivity on campus

Uhh…you guys are aware you go to Harvard, right? So you’re already an elitist, a classist, and in a very exclusive club.

Perhaps someone should suggest these retards go to a state school?

I shouldn’t paint with such a wide brush, of course. I’m sure there are many fine young people of a non-privileged background who attend, and it seems that the writers at the Crimson at least tangentially acknowledge that but fail, utterly, to realize how they are the 1% they appear to dislike.

Which, upon reflection makes perfect sense. Most young adults rebel when they hit college, and what else would the children of the most privileged of people rebel against beyond…the privilege given to them by virtue of their birth.

Your line about Harvard being free to ban whatever groups they choose because they’re private is correct from a libertarian POV, but I’m pretty sure they’d run afoul of anti-discrimination laws if they only banned fraternities.

“Harvard is a private institution, so it can implement whatever policy it wants”

Reason loves to make this mistake. Harvard is a non-profit corporation, probably under Massachusetts law. Corporations are, legally, “artificial persons”. The law defines them and says what they can and cannot do. I’m sure Harvard cannot refuse to accept or hire blacks or Jews, etc. Non-profits have many tax advantages and must serve a public purpose to exist. Shockingly, my parents could not set up the “Alan Vanneman Scholarship Fund”, donate money to it, deduct the amounts from their taxable income and award me a tax-free scholarship. In the good old days, when WASPs ran the world, Harvard could discriminate its ass off, but now not so much.

My God. Soave has managed to cause Venneman to make a correct and reasonable point. Words fail. Reading Venneman make an intelligent point is like seeing Big Foot and getting abducted by Aliens on the same day.

Uh, not WASPs. The Institute for Advanced Studies, where Einstein used to hang his hat, is in Princeton rather than Harvard because the head of the Harvard math department didn’t want to have to give jobs to Jews. The money for the center was donated by the Bamberger family, Jewish merchants in New York who more or less sold their department store to Macy’s. It was Bamberger’s that “invented” the Thanksgiving Day parade as a way to kick of the Christmas shopping season.

And I’m sure there is a butt load of federal and state grant funding they receive too. So don’t give me this “private institution crap. More like, publicly subsidized, private elite club. One that’s not the NFL.

Social clubs exist at Harvard College that are unrecognized by Harvard itself. The oldest, dating to 1791, are the traditionally all-male final clubs. Fraternities were prominent in the late 1800s as well until their initial expulsions and then eventual resurrection off Harvard’s campus in the 1990s.

Harvard is a private institution, so it can implement whatever policy it wants: a ban on only finals clubs and fraternities, a ban on all single-sex groups, whatever. Whether such a course of action is wise is another matter.

No, it can’t. As long as it accepts federal student aid it has to live by the rules of Title IX and cannot engage in discrimination based upon sex among its students. You can be a single-sex college, but once you accept both men and women, you have to treat them equally. It is curious that Soave covers colleges for a living and doesn’t seem to understand this point.

He may be arguing this from a libertarian POV. From a libertarian perspective a private org could discriminate against men but a government institution could not. Not a hair I would split but I can’t imagine this would pass muster if a lawsuit was filed.

Will the administration employ spies to make sure too many students of same sex aren’t hanging out together in a club-esque way?

Spies? That implies some manner of evidence or intelligence collection. Any good bureaucrat would see that groups of men are guilty inherently and that the only sensible solution would be for the men to purchase licenses and be issued women by the University.

Oh come on now! Everybody knows that while men often verbally cut each other down, sometimes based on the most ridiculously minor differences, women are always super-supportive of each other in both words and actions.

When you’re a woman, it doesn’t matter whether another female is in any way more attractive, smarter, more successful, wealthier, better connected, just stole your boyfriend, etc. You selflessly love her and support her just the same. Envy and jealousy are not emotions that women typically experience.

The great thing about this nonsense is that they are only screwing themselves. Harvard isn’t the only high-priced finishing school for upper-class legacy twits and affirmative action babies. There are plenty of other such places. And all of them compete for the same pool of students. So go ahead, Harvard. Ban greek life. And then watch your competitor schools who haven’t done that attract your best applicants. Good luck with that.

Victorians? The Hasty Pudding, AKA the Institute of 1770. began as a revolt against Puritan cooking before the American revolution.

Robby should know by now that it’s Final Clubs with no s on the Final. National fraternities were banned from Harvard after the Civil War and only re-appeared around the turn of the 20th century, welcomed back by antielitist progressives who wanted more downmarket undergrads admitted.

Without fraternities, how are rich young men supposed to engage in homoerotic activity without questioning their sexuality? If these young men are deprived of the “its not gay if its a brother”, we could end up with an entire generation of closet cases. And no one wants that.

I am always amazed at how far people will twist their logic to excuse themselves from being gay. The amount of times I’ve seen people refer to a “feminine penis” always gives me a chuckle. Just be gay, no one cares.

There is something about a certain breed of upper-class college guys that are prone to that. I turned down membership in two things in my life; a fraternity and the club rugby team in college. In both cases, it was because being a member involved some seriously gay shit by my standards at least. They all seemed happy and good for them. But all I could say was “not my thing pal”.

Me too. But they all seemed to go on and marry some upper-crust white girl and have three and a half children. Like I say, it lets them get their gay on without questioning their sexuality, which I guess some people need.

Do you suppose they consider it an inevitable part of respectable life that once they’re done having fun in college, they’ll live the rest of their life in relative misery to keep up appearances? Does that explain the stereotypical father figure who just sits and watches sportsball every night looking despondent?

Doubtful, I think it’s more likely that the she-beast they married was a lot of fun until the second kid.

Sure, they could be closeted for their entire life but I think the takeaway here is that fraternities (and most people of the time) considered the ‘gay stuff’ to be so debasing that most people would not be able to ‘power through’ it due to how despicable it was considered.

Now, did that accidentally create a safe space for a perceived perversion in the hallowed halls of elite universities? Heh, well, yeah. Probably. ^_^

These days if you want to let your freak flag fly, there isn’t much reason not to. Even, or especially, in places like Harvard.

I had good grades and could drink without embarrassing myself much. That is what got me the invitation to the frat. And I had a friend from high school on the rugby club team who knew I was a very good open field tackler in high school football and various sandlot games. That was really about it.

“The early motto of Harvard was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, meaning “Truth for Christ and the Church”. In the early classes, half the graduates became ministers (though by the 1760s the proportion was down to 15%) and ten of Harvard’s first twelve presidents were ministers. Systematic theological instruction was inaugurated in 1721 and by 1827 Harvard became a nucleus of theological teaching in New England.”

Usually they mean trannys and crossdressers. It’s just something people say to avoid having to admit to themselves that they exhibit homosexual tendencies. Particularly because many of the people I see say it seem to hate gays.

I never understood why those guys couldn’t experiment with their sexuality from the comfort of a dorm room. I guess the institution of the frat, with its macho trappings and faggoty-ass traditions, provides the safe space necessary to erase that line of discomfort between a young man and another young man who want to suck each other’s cocks without being labelled gay.

If I recall, I walked around the Harvard campus back in the early aughts. Was in Boston for a biznatch trip. I was hoping to see a lot of people in blue blazers and turtle necks. But they just looked like regular sloppy college kids, wearing cargo shorts and uggs.

My university never had fraternities. Some students still formed their own off campus, but nothing officially recognized. I still don’t understand the fascination over frats. I sort of imagine them being like Junior Bohemian Groves, and Richard Nixon remarking that his fraternity days were the “most goddamn faggy thing you could imagine”.

Roughly a thousand less legacy bluebloods a year getting that particular “most prestigious academic institution in the world stamp” on their resumes and its immediate advantage over smarter people who worked much harder to get into lower ranked schools?

They shouldn’t call themselves social justice ‘warriors’. When I meet one, I offer to engage them in mortal combat. Every one of them freaks out and threatens to call the cops (deeply ironic when you think about it).

Just open Harvard up to everyone. Make admissions by lottery if space is limited. It’s the only way to be sure that socio-economic-other-possibly-discriminatory factors aren’t subconsciously weighed in the application process.

ah yes…politically correct feminism. Let the gals do whatever they want because “girl power!” but don’t let any good-ol-boys clubs exist! What if those frats were homosexuals? Man that would really put the politically correct police in a bind.

We had an all black frat on campus back in 1977. They wore red jackets that said “The Only All Black Greek” and all drove red, brand new, 1976 Firebird Trans Ams. All of them were also football players and, because we were a division III school and no financial incentives were allowed, the Trans Ams were provided to them by alumni.

I propose a slight amendment to the article’s last sentence: “Pinker is right. Harvard?and The Crimson?deserve all the opprobrium they’re [NOT] likely to receive”

The liberal elitists who haunt Harvard’s hallowed halls won’t think the Crimson is wrong, neither will their connections or backers. Most liberals on the street will think this is just peachy dandy. The only folks who will be upset about this are libertarians and conservatives, and very few out there really give a tinker’s dam what we think or say.